Muxtape vs. the RIAA
The Constable on August 20th, 2008
Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.
This is what has been displayed on Muxtape.com for the past two days. I had planned on doing a little writeup on Muxtape, and discussing some of the copyright issues they may have to deal with… but while they’re down I think it may be best not to speculate too much.
That said, Muxtape is (was?) an interesting but simple idea: let people make mixtapes online and share them. The obvious problem with this though is that it’s not legal to upload songs you don’t have rights to. Of course, like most sites that are trying to actually be somehow legit, they make it clear on the site that you can only upload songs you have rights to upload - but they don’t do anything to really enforce this. There is definitely no army of moderators going through the content and verifying whether or not it’s copyrighted.
My guess as to how this will play out is that in the end Muxtape will have to strongly support some sort of digital fingerprinting system, and likely either only offer songs that are “cleared,” or at least have to pay web radio rates, much like Project Playlist.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:51 am
[...] Muxtape shut down (as we knew it would) due to completely disregarding the RIAA and being unable to come to any agreement with them. Now [...]